Do banks’ right hands know what the left is doing?

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◆ Do investors want unified capital markets coverage?
◆ Corporates fear democracy
◆ Why are FRNs trending?
◆ Second lien mortgages in arrears ― yes please

Banks’ urge to cut costs in debt capital markets, especially syndicate desks, is prompting some to call for the ‘global capital markets’ model: one team for equity and all kinds of debt.

They argue this could heal banks’ disjointed thinking and allay investors’ frustration that they have to say the same thing to five different bankers at every firm. But there are plenty of sceptics...

Few in the corporate bond market expected its rally to last into this year, still less the second quarter. But here we are and it’s still running. A motley bunch crammed into the market this week and found a great reception. As Mike Turner explains, they’re partly packing the funding in to avoid this year’s great big risk event: the US election.

Floating rate notes are the natural product for banks to issue, but normally they don’t much, because most investors prefer fixed rate bonds. So why are investors gagging to buy floaters now, just when everyone agrees interest rates are about to fall? Sarah Ainsworth goes through the ins and outs.

Second lien mortgages are the kind of — shall we say 'challenging' — collateral familiar from the US securitization market, but as George Smith and Victoria Thiele highlight, the UK has produced four deals in the past five months. The latest, from Equifinance, had some pushback in the market, but investors were only joshing and bought it in the end. We ask if lower ranked mortgages are the hot new asset class.